How Antonio Gracias Became the Most Hardcore of Elon Musk’s Loyalists
Gracias may be tighter with Elon Musk than any other investor. He was an early backer of Tesla and SpaceX, and his private equity firm, Valor, has helped Musk’s companies get out of fixes for years. The two even vacation together. Musk’s Twitter may turn out to be a turkey for him though.
Early this year, as the interest costs from the $13 billion in loans Elon Musk took out to buy Twitter began weighing on his pocketbook, the billionaire turned for help to a longtime trusted partner.
The investor, Antonio Gracias, head of Valor Equity Partners, got involved early in Musk’s effort last year to acquire Twitter, helping him line up financing. Ever since the deal closed last October, Valor’s team has informally filled in for the chief financial officer, whom Musk fired on his first day in control of the company and has yet to replace, according to people close to the situation. Valor personnel helped Musk oversee aggressive cuts in staff and spending, whittling the social media company’s workforce to a fraction of its former size, some of the people said.
Musk also enlisted members of the firm to work on long-term financial forecasts for Twitter, which he has renamed X, and to help its banks possibly offload the debt to other investors, some of the people said. By spring, those plans had stalled, but the banks remained in close contact with Valor as they typically do with the in-house finance departments of their clients, one of the people said.